


Until the day break and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved

by leiascully



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-29
Updated: 2011-05-29
Packaged: 2017-10-19 21:42:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Tonight, we're going out."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Until the day break and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: Slight spoilers for "Forest of the Dead"  
> Concrit: Welcome  
> A/N: Title is from the Song of Solomon. Thank you to [**coffeesuperhero**](http://coffeesuperhero.livejournal.com/) for being the best roommate/beta. I'm sure a lot of people have written the story of how the Doctor took River to the Singing Towers, but I couldn't help myself adding to the pile (of good things, hopefully).  
>  Disclaimer: _Doctor Who_ and all related characters are the property of Russell T. Davies, Stephen Moffat, and BBC. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

He shows up on her doorstep, lounging against the wall with his hands in his pockets.

"Doctor," she says guardedly. She's never sure when she's meeting him. He looks old enough, but she's been wrong before. Last time she saw him, he barely knew her. "Is that a new suit?"

"You like it?" he asks, and that smirk lets her know it's _her_ Doctor, the right time and place. "It's micro-tailored or some nonsense. What marvels of technology you have in the fifty-first century."

"What, Gallifrey wasn't chock-a-block with instant microtailors on every corner?" she asks him, setting her hip against the door frame.

"Nah," he says, sauntering across the hallway and slipping an arm around her waist. She tips her face up for his kiss, and oh, isn't he a welcome change from all her books? He feels good against her and he smells good and the low rumble of his voice as he murmurs that he's glad to see her is like Old High Gallifreyan to her ears.

"Cheeky," she tells him. "You come round to my gaff, taking liberties with my person, just expecting to be invited in after I haven't seen you for ages."

"No," he says, and there's something in his smile she can't quite place.

"No?"

"I don't expect to be invited in," he tells her, stroking her back as if he's not even paying attention to where his hands are wandering. She loves this thing between them, the easy familiarity with which he touches her. Lately in her timeline she's been spending all her time pining after him while he stands in the same room and peers at her from under his hair, not sure what to make of her.

"Well, that makes a change," she says. "Usually you can't wait to come inside."

"Ah, but tonight, my River," he says, tapping her on the nose with one finger, "we are going out."

"Out where?"

"You can change in the TARDIS, if you like," he says, ignoring her question. "I think she's whipped up something for you in the wardrobe. The old girl's been missing you. Wouldn't let up, kept bleeping at me. 'Date with River' practically burned into the monitors. She wouldn't let me put in any coordinates but yours. Kept telling her she was a time machine, there was no way I was going to be late."

"She likes the way I handle her," River murmurs. "All right then, Mister Mysterious Doctor. Lead on." She locks the door behind her without bothering to grab anything. The TARDIS will provide. She always has. The Doctor actually holds her hand as they walk to the beautiful blue box, sitting there innocently anachronistic on the corner of the road.

"Is this going to be a special night, then?" River asks him.

"Oh, sweetie," he says, "one neither of us will ever forget." He snaps his finger and the door of the TARDIS swings open. "Tsch, and now look, you've got me using your silly endearments."

"Well, now I know it's a special night," she teases him. "Have you cut your hair?"

He jerks his chin at her, smiling. "Go on then."

She steps over the threshold into the warm homey light of the TARDIS. "Where is the wardrobe at the moment?"

He's already fiddling with the control panel, bless. "Ask her," his voice floats over to her. "She'll show you where to go."

River concentrates on the wardrobe and just like that, the TARDIS puts the map in her mind. "Oh, it's next to the swimming pool now, is it?" she murmurs. "You're a clever one." She trails her fingers along the side of the corridor, a little caress for a venerable old lady. She loves this ship, just about about much as she loves the man who flies it. They've all been in this together a long time now.

So it's not too much of a surprise when she opens the hatch of the wardrobe and finds that the dress hanging there is the most beautiful dress she's ever seen. Of course the TARDIS would give her something perfect. It's black as the depths of space and shimmers a little and it's waiting on a hangar just for her, with shoes underneath to step into. River isn't one to be thrilled by clothes when there's so much more going on in the universe but oh, this is _the_ dress she's been looking for all her life. It really is a date, then.

She takes a deep breath. This is new; this is different; this isn't something the Doctor does. But she'll be damned if she's going to let a chance like this slip past. She strips out of the everyday clothes she's wearing and throws them over one of the racks. She half-holds her breath as she approaches the dress, as if it's going to disappear, but it just hangs there and gleams at her. The fabric slides softly against her skin with that elegant swishing noise. The dress fits as if it's made for her, the skirt just grazing the floor after she slips on the heels. The TARDIS knew her business: the neckline does wonders for River's décolletage, and her figure's rarely looked better - usually on these adventures she's sweaty and disheveled by now, one way or another. She twists her hair up into a bun and looks at herself approvingly in the mirror. Now there's just the age-old problem to deal with.

"Doctor," she calls. "A hand?"

He leans around the edge of the hatch. Cheeky boy, must be waiting for her to change. Watching her change, maybe, while she indulges her vanity. Not that it matters where he is: he hears her when she calls.

"Zip me up, will you?"

He crosses the room like they're in the climax of a movie, when the music swells and the hero strides purposefully toward the heroine and finally, finally they kiss. But he doesn't kiss her this time, just stops and studies her, and then nods and steps behind her, tugging the zip up the last few inches. She shivers with anticipation, watching him in the mirror as he gazes at her, and then his lips brush across the place where her shoulder meets her neck, just under her hairline.

"You look beautiful, River," he says, meeting her eyes in the mirror.

"Thank you, honey," she says, leaning back against him. He wraps his arms around her. He's all bones again, hasn't been eating properly. Something's on his mind. "What's so special about tonight?"

"Hmm?"

"Tonight." She wriggles against him, still watching his shaded eyes in the mirror. "You said the TARDIS wouldn't even let you go anywhere else."

"Oh," he shrugs. "Hyperbole. Exaggeration for the sake of effect, in this case the effect of making you feel extremely attractive and desirable and indeed singular in the whole of space and time. It's not every woman in the universe who's my date tonight, you know."

"I hope I'm the only one, in fact," she says.

"Well, yes, in point of fact you are," he says. "Don't let it go to your head, Doctor Song."

"I don't know," she teases him, turning in his arms. "I'm feeling like a very singular individual at the moment, though one who wouldn't mind being part of a twosome."

"Ah, now, I just got you _into_ the dress," he says, looking down at her. "Plus we've got dinner reservations in oh, half an hour."

"We've also got a time machine," she reminds him.

"Believe me, River, I've wrung every minute I can out of tonight," he says. He kisses her long and soft and slow. Her eyes close and her hands tighten on his arms. He can be quite the romantic, her Doctor. God, he makes her _ache_ , even after all these years. She smiles dreamily up at him as he pulls away.

"All right," she says. "Keep your secrets, my love. Let's go paint the town red."

He offers her his arm and she takes it. There's a little black clutch sat glittering on a shelf - it matches the dress, so it must be for her. It's just big enough for the pistol she usually carries, a tube of hallucinogenic lipstick, and maybe a small communicator - everything a woman could need. She sweeps it up as the Doctor escorts her out of the wardrobe.

They go to dinner in what must be the most posh restaurant on the planet, all glass and white linen and perfect, tiny portions of the universe's finest edibles. There's music. There's dancing. He manages, amazingly, not to step on her skirts, despite the fact that he's never been the most graceful or coordinated being in the universe. He looks down into her eyes as if they're in a pocket universe together all alone, the only two people who exist. What a relief this is, to be with him again this way. He's filled up her whole life for so long, all her thoughts and her dreams; it's been a stab to the heart every time he's looked at her with those new and wary eyes.

"Where is the music coming from?" she murmurs after what feels like endless, blissful hours of drifting across the floor in his arms, as if they were the kind of couple who did this instead of the kind of couple who cobbled together a lifetime out of moments stolen from the jaws of disaster and history.

"Ah, I was waiting for that," he says. "Didn't have time for your environment check tonight, eh? This is Dorillian."

She leans back in his arms to get a better look at him. "The Singing Towers?"

He inclines his head. "The very same."

"Right now we're dancing to the music of the Singing Towers?"

"I didn't have a big enough pocket for my accordion," he jokes.

"Oh, you," she says. She can't even find words for the swell of emotions inside her. "The place I most wanted to go in all my life. How did you know?"

"You mentioned it once when you were younger," he says.

"And you remembered."

"A positive repository of obscure histories, me," he says. His eyes have gone brooding again.

"Tell me what's so different about tonight," she asks again.

He shakes his head. "Can't a man take the woman he loves out to dinner without having some deep dark reason for it?" he murmurs, pulling her closer so his lips are next to his ear and their bodies are pressed together in the small crowd of dancing couples. "Can't the Doctor dance with River Song on a beautiful midsummer night on a lost, enchanted world with no other justification than that's a lovely thing to do?"

"You've been among the humans too long, my love," she tells him, her cheek pressed against his lapel now. "You and I, we're complicated space-time events. Nothing is ever that easy for the Doctor and River Song."

"Well, maybe it ought to be," he says with a tinge of frustration in his voice.

"You know better than that," she says.

"I owe you my life," he says. "Several times over. I owe you my heart and my soul, River. There's not enough nights like this in the universe to pay my debt to you."

"I owe you the same back," she reminds him, straightening up. "Love isn't about paying back debts. It's about forgiving them."

"Do you forgive me, River Song?" He looks deep into her eyes. Their feet are moving only by reflex now.

"Always," she says. "Do you forgive me?"

"Everything," he says.

"Well then," she says. "That's settled. How about a breath of air?"

"Excellent idea," he tells her, and together they walk out to the balcony and down to the gardens. The gardens are glorious, of course: all sorts of plant species she studied as fossils, night-blooming this and luminous that, laid out in beautiful little paths and bowers. They stroll along, arm in arm, pausing every now and then for a kiss as if they were an ordinary couple dizzy with love and the heady scent of the flowers. The towers glow too, laid out in patterns through the city. It's an utterly perfect scene, painfully beautiful, and she can't imagine anything better than being here with him talking about old memories, adventures they've had, the bits of their lives they've shared.

"All right, Professor Song," he says, running one finger over the blossoms that hang heavy near their faces. "Go on then. Tell me about the Singing Towers of Dorillian, I know there's a lecture just bursting out of you. Archaeologists, you're all the same."

"We aren't," she says, giving him a dangerous smile just for fun. "But since you asked, the towers sing because they're built on sites where the natural resonance of the planet can be felt. The towers amplify and concentrate that resonance. They're a triumph of architecture, artistry, and engineering - in addition to picking up the vibrations from the earth, they also capture the wind, and some rather clever solar collectors make it possible to hear the light as it beams past and excites the molecules in the collector. It's like sliding your finger on the rim of a wine glass, only the whole planet can hear, and it's all modulated by the tuning of the towers."

"See there," he says, eyes bright, "I knew you had a lesson for me."

"Oh, shut up," she says. "Has anyone ever told you you're insufferable?"

"Never," he says promptly. "I am a delightful and charming companion in any situation. Positively renowned for my conversational aptitude and my ability to make even the worst conundrum turn out all right."

"Sadly that's true," she sighs. "If only you didn't know it so well."

"Oh." He reaches into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulls out the sonic screwdriver. "Here, I nearly forgot." He passes it to her.

"What's this for?"

"For you," he says, all off-hand as if it doesn't matter, but he's got creases around his eyes and he's rocking back and forth on his toes as if he's nervous or upset.

"You're not giving me your sonic screwdriver," she tells him.

"The TARDIS will make me another one eventually," he says. "Anyway, I've got a feeling you'll be needing it."

She pretends to glare at him. "Spoilers, my love."

"Just keep it with you," he says. Something in his voice tells her not to argue about it anymore. She turns her attention to the tool in her hand.

"What are these? It's never had these before."

"Dampeners."

"Oooh," she says. "She's really got this down to an art."

He ducks his head, looks sheepish and sweet again. "Well, I have broken, er, quite a lot of them over the last few years."

River smiles and stretches up to kiss him on the cheek. "True enough, my love. But the old girl loves a challenge, and it isn't as if you broke them, I don't know, trying to pry open a tin of beans."

"Only once," he amends hastily. "Rory was hungry and there was nothing else in the scullery."

"Ah," River says, "hence the dampeners - I assume they work on you rather than whatever you're aiming at? You know, when I told you to build a cabinet with this thing, I didn't really mean it."

"Just make sure you keep it close," he tells her. "It won't do any good if you leave it at home."

"It'll be my constant companion," she assures him. "Much more innocuous than my sonic blaster, surely." She tucks it into the clutch she's still carrying.

"Can we just sit for a moment?" he asks. "Look, there's a bench with a nice view."

"Of course," she says.

They tuck themselves in under a bower of some kind of roses. He stretches out his long legs and takes her hand, leaning against her. They look out over the lights of the city, the beautiful doomed city. All cities are doomed in the end, she supposes, whether the end comes sooner or later. Dust to dust, the way the universe was and ever shall be. Morbid thoughts for an evening of champagne and music, she tells herself, and cups her free hand around their clasped hands.

"This is nice," he says. "I don't get to do this very often."

"Garden?" she teases.

"Live," he says and squeezes her hand. "Love. Be anyone but the Doctor alone, holding back the tide with a screwdriver."

"Who are you tonight? John Smith?"

"'Sweetie', I think," he says with a smile.

"You'll have to do better than that, then," she tells him. "You've been quite grim tonight, with the foreshadowing. You need practice at living, that's all. Let's go home and I'll unfurrow your brow for you, my love. It's high time you followed through on your promise to get me out of this dress."

He does cheer up a bit at that - there are charms that even Time Lords aren't immune to. They walk back to the TARDIS hand in hand; she has the clutch with the sonic tucked under her other arm, pondering that precious gift with half her brain as the other half devotes itself to increasingly vivid plans for the rest of the night.

"Your place or mine?" she asks as they step into the TARDIS.

He looks sheepish. "Actually, I've been sleeping in your room lately."

"Getting sentimental in your old age?" She looks over her shoulder at him as she walks down the corridor.

"I've missed you," he says, catching her up. "Isn't that allowed?"

"Encouraged, honey, but rather unexpected," she tells him as she opens the hatch to her room.

The TARDIS has really outdone herself. The lights are low and warm and rosy and the bed looks freshly made up and bigger than usual, with silky new sheets and plump pillows. It's the coziest little love nest River has ever seen, with everything but flower petals and a high hat of chilled champagne waiting. Her beautiful room on her beautiful ship with her beautiful Doctor easing down the zip of the dress: for a moment, River thinks her heart will rupture with the delight of it all, sending love out in all directions like a star going supernova. The Doctor's fingertips on her bare back are tracing out ancient runes, scraps of poetry no one's read for thousands of years, words of love.

They undress each other with exquisite care. He kisses every newly exposed flash of skin, and she caresses the familiar, beloved lines of his body. He holds her close as if he can't believe in the reality of her, the presence of her; he touches her as if he's a penitent come to worship. No one in history gone by or not yet written could have loved as he does, she thinks. Maybe it's the two hearts. He stretches out on his side and pulls her leg over his hip, holding her gaze as he eases into her. There are three hearts beating in unison now, two hands stroking everywhere they can reach while two hands clasp together underneath the pillows, four eyes searching and finding at long last what they seek.

There's no screaming tonight - the way the pleasure sweeps over her is as powerful as ever, but the mood isn't right for it. Their lovemaking is slow, tender, thoughtful, the act of two people too wise and too familiar for desperate release. She's rarely so sentimental about the act, but she can't call it anything else in her head, not when he's looking at her with that glow of love in his eyes. There's an argument for the soul: they are so much more than the simple sum of their bodies here and now in this bed, more than the total of their thoughts and actions. They have become something together that defies quantification or description. When they whisper their names to each other, there are a thousand words unsaid crowding in behind the shape of breath around the letters.

They get up in the very early morning, sunrise local time, and drag the sheet off the bed. He sets the TARDIS to fly at low altitude around every tower on all of Dorillian, and they stand in the open doorway, bundled up together in the sheet against the breeze coming in, listening to the singing of the towers as the light pours over them and the landscape slides under them, rivers and forests and plains and cities and seacoast.

"It's beautiful," she says.

"Everything you expected?"

"Everything I dreamed," she tells him, leaning against his long warm body. "I will have to go back eventually, mind you."

"Time machine," he reminds her. "Get you back in time to catch up on that lost sleep, if you need."

"No," she says. "I don't want the chance of rewriting these moments. Last night was perfect. I don't want anything saved over it."

"Time doesn't work that way. Your personal narrative keeps trekking along no matter where you are."

"I know that," she tells him. "I just had a strange feeling. I've learned to respect those, traveling with you."

"All right, Professor Song," he says. "We'll just pop you back in time for breakfast."

"Maybe in time for lunch," she says. "I haven't got any classes until after then. Surely they can weather another lecture on the Aplan Mortaria."

"Can't imagine they won't hang on your every word," he says, wrapping his arms more tightly around her. "When do you need to go?"

"Not yet," she says. "We still have time." She tugs the sheet snugly around them as the TARDIS dances through the morning air. Below them, the towers sing a hymn to the rising sun, and it seems as if the sound rises in columns of pure light, all the way to the stars.


End file.
